Hey, I may have been fresh out of surgery but I wasn’t DEAD when I noticed how hot my nurses looked in their scrubs!
The OP complains about scrubs looking like pajamas. Pajamas can be sexy. And when your caregiver bends over you wearing that loose top with the scoop neck you can be GLAD she’s wearing scrubs. And the way a cotton/poly blend that has been washed 800 times molds perfectly to the nurse’s tush…
But I could probably find a woman in a burka sexy if I tried. Or even if I didn’t–one must keep his mind open. (Did you see the flash of her eyes through the mesh? RRRRROW!)
You’re fucking kidding me, right? You will probably find me in the grocery store with hair and makeup done in a t-shirt and sweatpants because I am COMFORTABLE in those - and when I come home from work, those are the first things I reach for to put on. They don’t look bad, either - they look casual. But I don’t wear them because it’s ‘socially unacceptable’ to wear a nice outfit. I wear them because that’s what I feel the most comfortable wearing - that or jeans.
In all fairness, tennis players (and cheerleaders and figure skaters) aren’t counting on their skirts to provide modesty and coverage. They wear those brief or leotartd thingies underneath. The skirt is just top-dressing. The skirt is considered the standard uniform in those sports, but the skirts that they wear are designed in such a way as to not interfere with or inhibit the activity. In the case of figure skating, they enhance the activity by making it look prettier. In the case of cheerleading, the skirts enhance the activity by accenting the movements of the cheerleaders. Nursing is not a sport that is being performed for the enjoyment of an audience. Plus, in most cases, the tennis players, figure skaters, and cheerleaders aren’t being squirted with blood and vomit on a regular basis.
Anna does look lovely in that photo, however. Thank you for sharing.
Apropros of nothing: I once read something about Dutch colonialists in Africa wearing the exact same full Dutch regalia while in Africa that they would have worn while in the Netherlands, despite the fact that they were for a much colder climate. Hat, shirt, undercoat, long breeches, scarf, etcetera, the works, all bundled up. In Africa. It seemed silly. Until I realized years later I’m doing the exact same thing.
Right now I’m wearing a necktie originally designed to keep my neck warm, an undershirt, underpants, a long sleeve shirt with a vesitgial collar designed to turn up to keep my neck warm although it’s never worn this way, a jacket with a vestigial lapel designed to be buttoned up against the cold although it’s never worn this way, long pants, stockings, and hard leather shoes. I’m fully outfitted in the modernized version of the cold weather clothing originally worn by people who colonized this area. The people native to this area wore breechcloths, because it gets over 100 degrees fahrenheit with alarming regularity. I almost fainted on the way to my car this morning, drenched in sweat from this ridiculous archaic costume.
What’s worse, if I’m not wearing this “business suit”, nobody enculcated to this culture will take me seriously. I’m no exception. If someone shows up in my office unnanounced in a business suit, I smile politely and inquire as to their business. If the exact same person were to show up in a breechcloth, I would smile politely and hit the silent alarm. So anyway, if the medicos found a way to make their occupational outfits a little more utilitarian and sensible yet still socially acceptable, more power to 'em. I’m stuck with mine.
Now the maids, on the other hand, are a different matter. Why can’t our maids wera those classy little numbers the French maids wear?
You of all people have no room to talk about what is “professional”, sweets.
:rolleyes: Francis E Dec, Esq, does the word “shallow” mean anything to you? It seems you care more about appearances than actual practicalities and necessities. I’d rather have someone in clean scrubs with her hair tied back than someone in a stained white nurse’s uniform with styled hair.
Oh, and until you go around wearing a skirt and pantyhose, don’t you DARE tell us women that pants aren’t more convenient. Have you ever worn a skirt and pantyhose? Then shut the fuck up.
Note-the most comfortable thing is actually a long full skirt, the kind that you can just puddle around you when you sit on the floor. However, it’s also impractical for working-gets caught in things, tangles in your legs, etc. And a straight skirt-long or short-you just can’t run or move as well.
I like wearing skirts, actually-I love skirts. But if I’m in a job where I have to be moving constantly, lifting, bending over, moving quickly-I’m gonna wear pants. If you don’t like it, that’s just tough shit, dude.
Excuse me if I dress for MY OWN CONVENIENCE, and not for your’s.
You’re right. There are comfortables clothes that are more attractive than scrubs. However, as many other people have stated, the more “attractive” and “professional” outfits are damned expensive to clean. Also, outfits smeared with feces and blood are a biohazard. If necessary, you can throw them away at little cost to yourself or the medical clinic/office/hospital you work in. Also, the material scrubs are made of, while not very attractive is a lot easier to clean than something like khakis and a button-down blouse.
And while it may (or may not) be true that our generation does not place as much emphasis on personal appearance, I don’t think you can apply this to someone who, as many others have agreed, wakes up at 5, works 12-18 hours and regularly has to have the contents of someone’s bowels and/or veins smeared on their clothes.
I have many friends working in the medical community, and they’re more concerned about getting clean and catching a nap if they happen to have a break (which is pretty rare) than powdering their noses and re-arranging their hair. Maybe they do attend their patients sleep-rumpled and makeup-free, but I’d rather have someone who looks a bit sloppy and has had the chance to get clean and take a nap than someone who’s wearing a dingy startched white shirt and is nearly unconscious from lack of sleep.
In my opinion, it would be much harder to maintain a professional appearance in an all white scrub set/traditional uniform. I have enough problems keeping my (short) white coat clean. Hospitals tend to be messy places – not just blood, urine, and other fluids but I’ve had several incidents where people who weren’t looking where they were going end up spilling coffee onto my formerly pristine white coat.
I know that there were probably times this past year where people might have thought that I looked like “crap” in the hospital. I’m usually a frilly-girly type with makeup and hair fixed at all times but after spending a few nights where I got maybe ten minutes of sleep in between doing history and physicals in the ER and scrubbing on emergency surgeries, I learned to be happy with brushing my teeth and running my fingers through my hair. I would dance with glee when I would actually get a chance on call to shower and change scrubs! When it came down to getting my work done and taking care of my patients versus looking like a model, I always chose the former.
Don’t forget: hair. If you have just spent an hour trying teach someone with a new hip replacement, obesity, and mild confusion (leftover from anesthesia) how to use a real toilet, with only one interruption from the earth-shattering “POOM!” of their constipation turning into diarreah- there is a good chance that your formerly neat and professional hairdo has gotten rumpled. It is VERY VERY important you do Not try to touch it until you have undergone full decontamination. Of course, even if you get clean enough to touch your hair, you have to rush to your next patient and crawl under the bed to find his missing prosthetics. Bye bye hairdo!
Frankly, it’s about 10,000 times more important to be professional in medicine, than it is to look professional. Especially when you’re in the front lines, doing the dirty work. Scrubs are the simplest and least expensive solution to the problem. And frankly, those old nursing uniforms were not an alternative solution to the problem (of effective health care delivery), they were a part of the problem. Good riddance to them.
No, no, no! You’re forgetting Dr. J’s Rule #1:Never shower, change clothes, or fuss with your hair when you’re on call. The goal should be to look (and smell) like you’ve been there for 30 hours straight. If you do, people will help you get your work done so you can get out of there; if you look fresh and ready to go, they’ll work you like you are.
Learn well, grasshopper.
(Of course, the new work hours rules may render this moot, as they’ll have no choice but to help get you out.)
I dunno – to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, I can identify with Francis E. Dec, Esq.'s nostalgia for eras past. The olden times, before society was overrun by vulgarity – sweatpants, T-shirts, sneakers,…
… and lawyers, dammit.
I don’t care how ugly a nursing outfit might be (and really, I couldn’t care less about how they look), it can’t be as ugly a sight as that of ambulance-chasing lawyers’ advertisements on TV and billboards (and radio, too, but that’s just noisy). And I thought the legal profession was traditionally steeped in some measure of dignity…?
Excuse me, OP!! Just yesterday I got about 5 separate compliments from Drs, RNs and Administration on how nice and professional I looked in my scrubs. I always iron them, I pull my hair back neatly and wear a touch of makeup. When I worked in Labor and Delivery, I wore their navy blue scrubs that were ironed for us and thanked God I was in pants—sometimes nursing means climbing onto the gurney as it races toward the OR…can you hear your nurse saying “Hang on a minute while I hike up my skirt, I’ll get to your chest compressions in a sec!”
During Nurse’s Week, I wore the traditional white dress and cap for a 12 hour shift in Postpartum. Everybody loved seeing us in the whites, but I knocked off the damned hat 4 seperate times. Do you want your wife to hear “I’ll get your pain medication as soon as I straighten my hair”? She’ll never hear that from me—I wear my hair so I don’t have to worry about it and re-apply my lipstick at lunchtime and, like the rest of the nurses in Maternal/Child services, look just fine. And those rumpled men and women, splattered with the fluids of the people they’ve helped, pale and drawn from the hours they’ve spent helping, they look beautiful in the ER, the OR and on the floor to the families and friends of those they help. Be glad they don’t give a damn about how they look while they’re doing what they’re trained to do and you don’t know how.
Francis E Dec, Esq, I once rode to the cardiac cath lab astride a patient’s chest, doing chest compressions the whole way. Do you honestly think that I could have done that in a skirt? Or if I did, that exposing my underclothes to the whole world would have been more professional than wearing scrubs?
I believe we are doing the OP a disservice. He has made a valid point about how scrubs look slack and that is only the tip of the sartorial iceberg. For instance, has anybody noticed how slovenly our military looks these days? They look like they are fighting in their pajamas. And those colors! Who wears earth tones after Easter? Now look at the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. Polished helmets and pikes enliven any wardrobe, leaving the Swiss Guard snappy, perfectly groomed, and a better fighting force because they look so good.
Nurses should wear corsets and crinolines. If it was good enough for Clara Barton it should be good enough for them. I will take Mr Dec’s advice and start dressing better, too. A bow tie, celluloid collar, and straw boater while mowing the lawn would add the touch of elegance so lacking today.
The rest of you should be ashamed that you are such slobs. The fact that you DEFEND your slovenliness sickens me.
Yeah but I bet those nurses look alot better naked than your mechanic.
My wife is a nurse and I have worked in the medical profession. Scrubs are great and personally I have seen many absolutely yummy looking nurses in scrubs (especially my wife in her sushi cats scrub top).
If you can find a better looking uniform for the cost, you can revolutionize medical dress in the US…
The concept of medical “whites” was invented by Joseph Lister, M.D., the inventor of sterilization and antisepsis, as part of his clean-up-hospital-procedures campaign. This was in contrast to the black frock coats worn by surgeons up till then. I have read that surgeons used to pull threads out of their coats and use them to sew up patients after surgery, and Lister was determined to put a stop to that.
The white coat was meant to be white precisely because contamination showed up on it readily. Of course it had to be changed frequently, but that was Lister’s whole point. He wanted medical personnel to become conscious of cleanliness versus contamination.
Antisepsis has come a long way since the early 19th century. I think it’s pretty well ingrained in medical professionals by now that you have to keep clean and sterile. They sure scrub to beat the band. Hey, what do you know, maybe that’s why the new medical togs are called “scrubs,” do you think? Even the name shows the shift in emphasis of sterilization.
As I understand it, the whites were a vestige of an earlier stage in the development of medical procedure. A very important stage, but one that is now consigned to history.
As for the OP: Dec, get a fucking clue already. :rolleyes: I know your idea of an MD is Doctor Frankenstein, but get real. That is so 200 years ago.
